Category: politics

First published: Thursday, July 1, 2010

On 9/11, a small group of terrorists attacked the United States. In response, our government has spent the past nine years waging a “war on terror.”

It exploited those attacks as an excuse to start wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, using fear of Muslims as the justification. A preemptive war against Iraq was begun under false claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that the Iraqi government would share these with terrorists, particularly al-Qaida. Thousands of Muslims were rounded up in the Middle East as possible terrorists and tortured. The “worst of the worst” were sent to Guantanamo to be held and tortured indefinitely. But the U.S. knew all along that many of these prisoners were innocent, misrepresenting them as terrorists in order to generate fear that would induce Americans to permit restriction of their civil liberties and allow their tax dollars to be spent supporting these wars.

Our government needed to find terrorists living among us as a further way to manipulate our fear of Islam and thus fight its “war on terror” at home. Taking inspiration from former Vice President Dick Cheney’s 1 percent doctrine (if there is a 1 percent chance someone might be a terrorist, the government must act as if it is a certainty), the government launched a program of preemptive prosecution against Muslims to entrap and convict them of contrived crimes in order to preempt them from possibly supporting terrorism in the future.

Hundreds of Muslims are serving long prison sentences in America for crimes they did not commit. The purpose of these prosecutions is to increase our fear of Muslims and to convince the public that repressing both the Constitution and civil liberties is the way to prevail over terrorism.

We know the consequences of this injustice firsthand. We were involved in cases of Muslims who were targeted and entrapped in the Albany area, such as Yassin Aref, Mohammed Hossain, Ansar Mahmood, Dr. Rafil Dhafir and Imam Warith Deen Umar. We know that these individuals were not involved in terrorism, and our government now acknowledges as much. When innocent people are entrapped and framed based essentially on their religion, we cannot turn our heads and pretend that we do not see injustice. We cannot remain silent while these Muslims and their families, our friends and neighbors, have been wronged.

On April 5, the Albany Common Council became the first city in the United States to pass a resolution calling on the U.S. government to appoint a special prosecutor to re-examine the cases of Muslims who were preemptively prosecuted. The inspector general of the Justice Department has recommended this, but the department itself has taken no action.

Without Muslims falsely convicted of terrorism, how would our government justify its repression of civil liberties, its wars abroad and the “war on terror” itself?

On July 23–25, Albany will host the United National Peace Conference, bringing together all the national peace organizations to discuss strategies for implementing peace in the U.S. and the world. Speakers will include Noam Chomsky, Kathy Kelly and Cindy Sheehan.

One of the issues the conference will consider is how Muslims here and abroad are mistreated based on fear of Islam, and how to break this exploitation of fear cycle. You will hear many stories from both Muslims and non-Muslims like us, who have been personally touched by experiences of injustice and are determined to speak out about it.

Even if you cannot attend the conference, you can still help promote peace. Learn to see your local Muslim community as your American neighbors who are striving, like you, to build this country, and as people from whom you have nothing to fear. We came to know Albany’s Muslim community from different perspectives. Each of us has learned from them that despite media hype, Islam is a peaceful religion that recoils from extremists or terrorism. Unfortunately, we have also learned how maligned and fearful Muslims are throughout America.

It is time to stop the wars, persecution and injustice that flow from fear. It is time to start a healing that only peace can bring.

Stephen Downs is an attorney in Selkirk and founder of Project SALAM (Support And Legal Advocacy for Muslims). Joe Lombardo is a Delmar-based organizer of the United National Peace Conference. Register for the conference here.

excuse me while i puke:

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is to receive a prestigious US medal and $100,000 (£67,000) prize for his work in conflict resolution. The National Constitution Centre is awarding him its Liberty Medal for “steadfast” efforts to broker peace in Northern Ireland and the Middle East. Previous winners include Nelson Mandela and former US presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush senior. Mr Blair said he was driven by values of “freedom, liberty and justice”. More here.

Naomi Klein: One of the most important messages that we really need to learn in this moment is if we are going to oppose the strategy that these G20 leaders have just put on the table for how to deal with the budget crisis that they created, if we’re going to say, “We don’t want to get stuck with the bill for your crisis,” then we have to put other revenue sources on the table, and that means cutting military and police spending, like the outrageous police spending we just saw in Toronto, but much larger than that, the losing wars that we’re fighting—that’s a great cost saver—and also taxing the banks, financial transaction taxes, but also going after the fossil fuel companies, because the message that we need to learn from the BP disaster is just the incredible costs imposed on societies by this industry. It is not just BP. Watch here.

Gita Sahgal has contributed to the current climate of intolerance and islamophobia in Britain, where the families of Muslim women like those I mentioned at the start, are having their hopes and dreams of a normal life in Britain dashed. Intolerance and confrontation with Muslims is on the rise all over Europe. Parliaments in France, Belgium and Spain are currently trying to pass laws against wearing the full veil in public, and a French MP justifies it by talking of combating “the French Taliban in our midst.” Violent incidents are recorded in Britain’s local papers every week. Human rights lawyer Helena Kennedy QC said on a platform recently, that we should be concerned that hostile and vicious expressions towards Islam have become shockingly respectable in our society – as racism and anti-Semitism once were. Full article.

A new report released by Amnesty International sheds light on the “discriminatory policies” that Israel imposes on the Palestinian population of both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel uses more than 80% of water from the main underground source, while restricting Palestinian access to 20%. Amnesty International calls on Israel to end its discriminatory policies, immediately lift all the restrictions it imposes on Palestinians access to water, and take responsibility for addressing the problems it created by allowing Palestinians a fair share of the shared water resources.

Children living in the poorest parts of the West Bank face significantly worse conditions than their counterparts in Gaza, a study conducted by an international youth charity has found. The report by Save the Children UK says that families forced from their homes in the West Bank are suffering the effects of grinding poverty, often lacking food, medicine and humanitarian assistance. Full article.

The fact that the mass-media have so enthusiastically embraced a regime with the worst human rights record since the fall of the military dictators of the 1970s – 1980s is indicative of the right turn under the Obama Wall Street regime. According to the White House and media, deathsquad democracies like Colombia now qualify as “role models” for Latin America . The problem is that neither the vast majority of Latin America citizens, nor most of the democratic parties in the region are buying: they prefer democracies without deathsquads, foreign military bases and narco-dealing Presidents. At present, the White House’s three leading allies in the region, Colombia , Peru and Mexico produce and sell 80% of the cocaine in the region. Will this appear in the media’s salutations to newly elected presidents? Full article.

while i don’t agree with some of AI’s analysis, human rights violations r rife in northwestern pakistan. the situation has devolved into a horrific humanitarian crisis. “In April 2009, the Pakistani army launched a major offensive in Malakand Division (NWFP) against the Pakistani Taliban, resulting in the displacement of over 2 million people, the largest displacement crisis in Pakistan’s history. This new wave of displaced joined the already 500,000 displaced people by the conflict in the FATA agencies. Nearly 90 percent of the people who fled the region had no access to organized camps and lived instead in extremely overcrowded conditions in host communities, existing slums and abandoned buildings. In many cases, three or four families were forced to share one residence, greatly straining host communities’ ability to provide sufficient food and clean water.” more here.

The “apocalypse” never happened, as some predicted, when Portugal decriminalized ALL illegal drugs eight years ago. The country did not become a haven for drug use, instead drug abuse and drug crime both fell. hmmm…

walls r definitely in.

In Toronto this week, contract workers are putting final touches on the three-metre high and six-kilometre long $5.5 million dollar concrete and metal security fence encompassing the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. Total security bill for the G20 in Toronto and G8 in Huntsville is expected to reach over $1 billion, the most expensive in history. Within and around this armed camp are 20,000 law enforcement officials, 1,000 private security guards, closed circuit TV cameras, military-style checkpoints along with sound and water cannons.Behind these steel cages is a corporate-driven narrative of profiteering. An open conspiracy that fuses Canadian state security agencies and one of Canada’s key multinational corporations, directing millions in public funds towards private accounts. Full article.

let’s join mrs hill!

Mrs. Hill’s crusade began a few years ago when her grandson, then 10, told her about the so-called Pacific garbage patch, a vortex of plastic and other debris floating between California and Hawaii, thought to be twice the size of Texas. She researched and homed in on bottled water, finding that millions of plastic bottles were disposed of daily and that most were not recycled. While most opponents of bottled water have sought piecemeal change, like getting government agencies to stop buying it, Mrs. Hill wanted her affluent, erudite town to take a bolder step. “The bottled water companies are draining our aquifers and selling it back to us,” she said, repeating her pitch from the town meeting in April. “We’re trashing our planet, all because of greed.” Full article.

After the brilliant Rolling Stone article by Michael Hastings, President Barack Obama has no valid option other than to fire Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Not because of the dozen outrageous anti-administration verbal gaffes which have been reported, but rather because this definitive piece on the “Runaway General” establishes the man in charge of the Afghanistan misadventure as an egotistical flake whose half-baked Afghan war-fighting strategy should never have been endorsed in the first place. It is McChrystal’s policy of counterinsurgency (COIN) that must be fired more than the man who exemplifies its irrationality. Full article.

A federal judge struck down the Obama administration’s six-month ban on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico as rash and heavy-handed, saying the government simply assumed that because one rig exploded, the others pose an imminent danger, too. US District Judge Martin Feldman, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan and has owned stock in a number of petroleum-related companies, sided with the plaintiffs. Full article.

Evo Morales, the Bolivian president, talks exclusively to Al Jazeera’s Latin America editor Lucia Newman about his country’s relations with the US.

ok, this interview with oliver stone and tariq ali about what’s going on in south america totally rocks! THIS gives me hope for the world. time to work together – not just south america as a unified continent, but all “third world”, “developing” countries that have been ruthlessly colonized, post colonized, and messed with forever. enough.

watch interview here.